Theatre in Review: Escuela (Under the Radar/Public Theater)Escuela is a sometimes gripping, sometimes perplexing exercise in what might be called the banality of armed revolution. Guillermo Calderón's script looks at a group of left-wing activitists in Chile, circa 1987, who get together to learn the practical techniques of revolution. Their faces are covered with scarves, lest they be caught and made, via torture, to identify each other; in any case, they don't really emerge as distinct personalities. The experience of watching the play is that of eavesdropping on militants giving survival lessons to their followers. "This is a bullet. It is divided into three parts," one of them tells the others, and we're off. The play consists of a series of presentations intercut with each other: a lecture about the structure of capitalist exploitation; a discussion of the "psychological war" waged by the US, which led to the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government; an explanation of the movement's organizational structure; lessons in how to effectively handle a gun; and a look at making an improvised explosive device. If this sounds dull, it isn't -- at least at first. The actors, who are miked, speak with an urgency that commands one's attention, and, in its early passages, Esceula presents a rare opportunity to enter into its revolutionaries' collective mindset. There are also fleeting moments that reveal how deeply their lives have been shaped by their political commitments -- for good and for ill. An explanation of the tortuous process by which agents make contact with one another reminds one of the pressures under which they live. A passing justification for causing human collateral damage provides a striking insight into the extent to which humanity has been sacrificed for the good of the cause. (A case study is presented, noting how young Vietnamese girls, looking frightened and vulnerable, would greet US soldiers on the road, waiting until they came close enough to detonate a bomb guaranteed to kill them, and the bombers, as well.) Such activities are viewed with a kind of innocence, that, in the age of ISIS, chills one to the bone. When one of them says, "We're like holy pastors," the natural tendency is to flinch at their sanctimony. The most gripping passage involves one of them tearfully denouncing the upcoming "No" referendum that deposed the tryannical General Pinochet and set the country on the road to democracy. (This event is well portrayed in Pablo Larraín's Oscar-nominated film No, released in 2012.) The vote, she insists, is not enough, as it will not lead to true control by the people, and, therefore, must be rejected. Clearly, the members of this cadre have learned nothing about compromise; they are willing to live and die by their beliefs -- even if history is about to render them obsolete. The vote will happen, democracy will return, and their devotion to Mao will leave them behind in the dust of history. All of which makes Escuela sound more dramatic than it is. The vast majority of the 90-minute running time is devoted to various lessons, and somewhere around the halfway point, dullness sets in. It doesn't help that everyone is masked and speaks Spanish. Because of the miking and the need for translation, the experience of seeing Escuela is like watching a foreign film with no visuals, just a soundtrack and subtitles. Under Calderón's direction, the five-member cast performs with as much urgency as possible under the circumstances, and Loreto Martínez's spare design is acceptable enough. But Escuela remains a concept in search of a drama. In 2013, The Public presented Neva, a play by Calderón, in English; a meditation on art and politics in early 20th-century Russia, it proved more draining than illuminating, despite some brilliant passages. Calderón remains an interesting talent, but his breakthrough moment awaits.--David Barbour 
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